50 000 Nouveaux Zaïres

By 1996, the nouveau zaïre — itself a 1993 redenomination replacing the original zaïre at 3,000,000 to one — was already disintegrating under hyperinflation that had been running above 6,000% annually. A 50,000-unit denomination would have seemed unthinkable at the currency's launch three years earlier. Mobutu's government printed its own notes at the Hôtel des Monnaies de Zaïre in Kinshasa rather than contracting a European security printer, a choice that reflected both political symbolism and the country's near-total exclusion from international credit markets.

The following year, Laurent-Désiré Kabila's forces swept into Kinshasa, the country was renamed the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the entire nouveau zaïre series was swept out of circulation. Notes from this final inflationary spiral had a lifespan measured in months.